GODLAND

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

I learned some new things about Iceland after watching Godland, a film about a Danish priest who travels across late-19th-century Iceland toward a settlement where he intends to build a church. According to one of the characters, another native of Denmark, no trees grow in Iceland. The winters are too harsh. Apparently this isn’t quite true, at least not currently. Possibly these settlers made this assumption of the island based on where their settlement was.

Often a movie like Godland is a bit of a struggle for those of us with no working knowledge of European history. Writer-director Hlynur Pálmason seems to assume some such knowledge among his audience, which makes sense given the languages spoken in the film are limited to Danish and Icelandic—quite pointedly so: we get the title card in both languages, in successive shots. This later proves relevant, as the priest, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), speaks Danish but does not know Icelandic, and is paired with an Icelandic-speaking guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurðsson), who leads him across the island. In the comparatively sparse moments of actual dialogue, their language barrier is a regular challenge.

I did not know, however, until checking Wikipedia after I got home that, at the time this film is set, Iceland was a Danish territory. with whom Iceland apparently shares historic ties dating back centuries. Watching Godland, a non-Scandinavian might feel like they’re missing some historical context, as there are clear tensions between the principal Dane and the principal Icelander. Where these tensions comes from, exactly, are never clear. This film is very much a slow burn, but eventually people do pretty horrible things to each other. Before the worst of it, there is a moment when Lucas screams “you brainless swine!” at Ragnar, who we are meant to think does not understand him.

I have to admit, however, I was mystified by this. It occurs well after Lucas falls deliriously ill on his cross-island journey, and it is Ragnar who brings him to safety. You’d think Lucas might feel some level of guilt after this, but instead there is a scene in which Ragnar seems to express guilt, that comes out of nowhere. In short, I found it difficult to understand the actions and motivations of these characters.

In the opening titles, we are told that Godland is inspired by the true story of old photos found in a wooden box in Iceland, thought to be the earliest photo record of that landscape. It turns out that story itself is every bit as much a fiction as the film, underscoring the need never to take any “based on a true story” claims a face value. In any case, Lucas lugs his heavy, primitive camera equipment along with him, having his subjects sit completely still for a good ten seconds every time he takes a photo.

And, indeed, the visual appreciation for the Icelandic landscapes, of which a surprisingly diverse array is featured, is the most that Godland has going for it. For a film this slow, a 143-minute run time is a good half an hour too long, but at least it’s nearly always beautiful to look at. The characters go from damp sea shore to verdant hills to molten lava to a vast expanse of ice and snow, all of it gorgeous.

There’s something very odd about Elliott Crosset Hove as Lucas, though. He is stoic, yet always appears extraordinarily tightly wound, a look that defaults on a piercing stare that barely falls short of bug-eyed. He is one of the coldest parishioners ever seen on film.

In the second half of Godland, Lucas wakes up recovered from his sickness, in a house run by a man and his two daughters in the settlement of his destination. Locals already have construction of the church underway. Lucas seems to develop a connection with the eldest daughter, Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne), but as with virtually every relationship in this film, theirs never goes anywhere particularly concrete. This settlement is near the sea, so when Lucas is well enough to converse again, he is asked why he trekked across the island when he could have just sailed there—a logical question. Lucas responds that he wanted to photograph and get to know the land and the people. The head of this household, Carl (Jacob Lohmann), quite rightly points out there were hardly any people around to get to know. And besides, if there had been, Lucas missed them because he was ill. All of this just comes together as interconnected threads of character action in Godland that ultimately serves no purpose.

Godland is an immersive experience, I’ll give it that. And I have a distinct feeling that there are multiple layers of depth to the storytelling here that I just failed to grasp. I kind of enjoyed the nearly-square aspect ratio clearly meant to evoke the photographs Lucas is taking, but otherwise I found this film to have a curiously uninviting narrative, keeping at least a certain segment of its audience at a distinct remove. It may be that, even with subtitles, a lot simply gets lost in translation.

It’s hard to love a movie when you really don’t like the guy at the center of it.

Overall: B-

80 FOR BRADY

Directing: C+
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

Tom Brady can’t act very well. Oh sure, he can deliver a serviceable speech, which he does a couple of times in 80 for Brady, a movie that feels like by-the-numbers pandering to old ladies and middle-aged gay men. It almost feels ironic that it’s a movie about fervent football fans, but, I suppose it’s also regressive even to say that: there are plenty of gay sports fans. And lots of old lady football fans. Either way, evidently Brady, as the real-life title character, is happy to be an object of adulation for everyone. Way to diversify!

There is a tender moment between Lily Tomlin and Tom Brady at the end of the film, a series of lines in a Super Bowl locker room meant to be full of heart. Tomlin is fine. The old ladies this movie was made for will think the same of Brady and his performance. I was a little embarrassed for him. Because I am that bitch, I guess.

To call 80 for Brady “hokey as shit” would be a grand understatement. I’m now interested in reading about the five senior women whose story this film was “inspired by.” All you have to do is watch the film and know that virtually none of it actually comes from real life. In the film, the four (rather than five) friends manage to sneak into the Super Bowl without tickets; wind up invited into a skybox; and Tomlin’s character Lou even manages to get on a headset and talk directly to Tom Brady during the game. The entire film is utterly preposterous, in an admittedly harmless-fun kind of way.

I’m not above saying I had a fairly good time watching it. I got a few good laughs out of it. It should be noted that I fall squarely in this movie’s target demographic. It features four iconic screen legends (the other three being Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field) and Billy Porter as the Halftime Show choreographer. I also happen to be a standup comedy fan, and a bunch of comics show up in bit parts, from Patton Oswalt to Jimmy O. Yang to Ron Funches. This movie even has Harry Hamlin is Jane Fonda’s love interest; Bob Balaban as Sally Field’s over-dependent husband; and Sara Gilbert as Lily Tomlin’s daughter.

Oddly enough, 80 for Brady goes out of its way to note that only two of the women are actually in their eighties. Rita Moreno indirectly notes that she is in her nineties, and Sally Field’s Betty specifically clarifies that she is 75. They all have 80 FOR BRADY jerseys custom made, and on Betty’s, she has red lettering crossing out the 80 and writing “70” above it. I guess I can respect the acknowledgment of each of these actors’ actual ages, retrofitted into the title that actually comes from the real women who inspired it (although their T-shirts read Over 80 for Brady).

I am particularly amused by the fact that the one time the word “fuck” is used in this movie, it’s Tom Brady himself who says it. If any demure old ladies are flocking to this movie, it’ll be cute Tom Brady who is the one who is the most vulgar. That kind of cracks me up.

I didn’t personally come to this movie for Tom Brady, of course. I couldn’t give half a shit about that man, his evident handsomeness notwithstanding. I can find plenty more handsome men to look at, by opening a web browser or just walking outside. I came for the icons: Tomlin, Fonda, Moreno, Field. They are fun to watch together. I had a pleasant time hanging out with them. The movie overall is fundamentally dumb, but that doesn’t always preclude a fun hang.

Ninety for Brady? Eighty for Brady? Seventy for Brady? Obviously we have to go with the one that rhymes.

Overall: B-

CLOSE

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A-

Close is very subtle, deeply relatable, and wholly affecting. It has a naturalistic style, in both performance and execution, so penetrating that it’s hard to shake.

It’s almost not worth mentioning that its director and co-writer, Lukas Dhont, previously made a film about a trans girl whose depiction was wildly controversial. Almost. As a cisgender gay man, Dhont is tackling nuanced themes in Close that he is far more qualified to explore—and in this case, he does it very successfully.

At first glance, Close is about intimate, but platonic, friendship. It’s the kind of movie I have long wished there were more of: telling stories about close friends, particularly among men or boys. Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) have the kind of friendship I never had but have long wished I did: one that is not sexual, but comes with it a casual physical intimacy. Léo and Rémi share a bed when Léo frequently spends the night. When they lounge in the grass, one will use the other’s torso as a pillow.

The thing is, these two boys are thirteen years old, a fraught time of adolescence indeed, and the slightest deviation in a relationship’s seemingly perfect rhythm can upset things catastrophically. I did not realize, going into this film, that the inciting incident would be a subtle form of homophobia: Léo and Rémi are just starting the school year, and it is immediately clear to their classmates that they are inseparable. A couple of girls casually ask if they are “together,” and Léo immediately reacts defensively. And in the ensuing scenes, we see him slowly, but unmistakably, distancing himself from Rémi.

One of many things Dhont deftly handles in Close is the way adolescents experience feelings that have no tools to articulate. Something is definitely happening between these boys, but neither of them knows or understands exactly what. We, as observers in the audience, are the ones who understand: Léo is afraid of being misjudged by his peers; Rémi is deeply saddened and doesn’t know for certain why. It’s heartbreaking to watch, and will make you recall your own cherished childhood friendships that fell apart without explanation or warning.

One night when Léo is spending the night with Rémi, he decides he wants his own separate bed, and when Rémi tries to get into the bed with him, they get into a physical struggle that stops just short of turning into a fight. On the grass at school, Rémi lays his head against Léo, and Léo scoots out of the way.

Close takes a fairly shocking turn about halfway through that I did not see coming, and drastically changes the nature and tone of the film overall. I’m still trying to decide how I feel about it, because it becomes about something more than, or maybe even different from, just the idea of a close adolescent friendship drifting apart. A film about only that would have been deeply relatable on its own. Furthermore, so little occurs in the first half to offer any sense of the turn of events that’s coming, I wonder if the story even justifies the shift. On the other hand, one could argue that is part of the point: how deeply emotions are felt by adolescents, in ways not easily clocked by the adults around them. Particularly when they are boys.

Regardless, the story sunk into my psyche with startling effectiveness, aided to a significant degree by Frank van den Eeden’s dazzling cinematography, and stunning performances by the two young leads. Eden Dambrine, incredibly, was discovered by Dhont on a train ride, and wound up getting the part and carrying the film with an incisive understanding of a character experiencing a range of difficult adolescent emotions. Gustav De Waele has every bit as much onscreen charisma, and his shorter amount of screen time left me hoping I would soon see him in something else.

There is a moment when Rémi’s mother asks Léo, '“What happened between you two?” This is the crux of the conflict in Close, because the answer is complex, and a thirteen-year-old just doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain it. Only gradually do things like love, guilt, or regret become clear even to oneself. For this to be the road taken toward self-actualization makes for a cathartic experience.

Questioning innocence can have tragic consequences.

Overall: A

EXPOSURE

Directing: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

Depending on the premise, the making of a documentary film can be just as interesting as the film itself. In Exposure, a three-person film crew follows an all-woman expedition to the North Pole—this happened in 2018, and due to a mixture of climate change, regional geopolitics, and global health crises, it is to date the last expedition to the North Pole ever to have occurred. And: as I watched eleven women drag their gear on sleds across ice above the Arctic Ocean toward the North Pole, I found myself dying to know more about the people who recorded all of this. Why aren’t these people also characters or subjects in the film?

Evidently director Holly Morris felt it better to focus on the 11 women, a fascinating mixture of backgrounds from across both Europe and the Arab World. This is a natural instinct, I suppose. I would pose that the three film crew members—also all women, incidentally—were by definition part of the group. The film really leans on the difficulty of making it to the North Pole on foot, or on skis. This film crew did exactly the same thing, while also setting up and executing cinematic shots. The way I see it, it’s those three people who did the most impressive thing—and they don’t even get any screen time.

You might not expect Arctic ice to be beautiful, but it is. Exposure is worth watching just for the scenery alone, which includes a lot of drone footage. The expedition launches from an ice base that includes a runway carved out of the snow and ice every year (or at least it was, until 2018), and we see a brief clip of a couple of Russian guys using their own drone to get footage of the landscape, and one of them explains how drones can go haywire due to being so close to magnetic north. It’s easy to infer that the filmmakers faced the same challenge, and at the screening I attended, Morris attested to as much. What limited drone footage they managed to get, they were able to use to maximum effect.

Exposure, which clocks in at a breezy 89 minutes, covers not just the expedition itself, but much of the two years leading up to it. This included winter training in Iceland two years before the expedition, and endurance training in the desert of Oman one year before the expedition. Cold or hot, these women learn to deal with extremes. But, nothing quite prepares them for the actual expedition itself.

Anyone with any sort of survivalist interest would be right at home watching Exposure. Oddly, the all-women cast and crew are somehow both historic and incidental. The purpose of the somewhat pointed mix of Western and Muslim women is never fully clear, but there’s something compelling about them all being women, and makes for rich storytelling. One woman starts off saying she actually does'n’t much like the company of other women. Although the film doesn’t get very deep into it, there is also a scientific study element, as all of the few studies on physiological responses to environments this harsh prior to this had been done on men.

The best part of Exposure is still the women themselves, the limits them push themselves to, and the ways in which they learn to optimize teamwork in high stakes situations. All eleven of the woman who are seen onscreen in the Arctic are dynamic personalities, and when one of them gets frostbite on her fingers, it’s easy to worry about what will become of her, and to be emotionally affected by the tearful goodbyes when she has to be air lifted out before reaching the North Pole.

I found it particularly nice to watch all this from the cozy comfort of a heated movie theater.

The last North Pole expedition to date gets the drone treatment.

Overall: B+

KNOCK AT THE CABIN

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B

I haven’t gone to a new M. Night Shyamalan movie in seventeen years. I got tired of how dumb they were. He’s had a kind of renaissance over the past half-decade or so, however, albeit with decidedly mixed reactions, but on average with an upswing. I finally decided to give him another chance with Knock at the Cabin. This is my report of how that went.

It was fine. Is this movie compelling? Sure. Is it suspenseful? Occasionally. Is it terrifying? Not really. Does it make sense? Get real.

To be honest, I kept waiting for the signature “Shyamalan twist,” and—spoiler alert—this movie really has no such thing. I thought there would be something revealed about the four intruders who force themselves into the titular cabin, or some unexpectedly clever way the gay couple with an adopted child staying there would get the better of them. In the end, everything going on, or being claimed, turns out to be legit, which just left me wondering: why? Knock at the Cabin is a surprisingly earnest story, in its way even endorsing divine judgment. If there is any twist, I suppose, it’s that neither the movie nor any of the main characters in it pass judgment on this family comprised of two dads and a daughter.

I will admit this was a particular detail that caught my attention: the protagonists are a gay couple, Eric and Andrew (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge). If this were the same story except they were a straight couple, I would have been less interested. The makeup of this family does prove to be a salient plot point, particularly the specific love of a chosen family, including a child—all of them part of marginalized communities.

The depiction of Andrew’s backstory as a gay man is a little heavy handed. We see several flashbacks of their relationship, including a physical assault at a bar and Andrew’s subsequent purchase of Chekov’s Gay Gun. His demeanor telegraphs “barely short of unhinged” when he’s purchasing this gun, and you’d like maybe someone at the gun store would express some concern. Then again, this is America, after all. In any case, there are elements of direction here that smack of a straight man telling a gay story, the actors themselves being gay notwithstading—although that fact does not go unnoticed, nor unappreciated.

The script, co-written by Shyamalan with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman, is based on a 2018 novel by Paul Tremblay, with the far better title The Cabin at the End of the World. The film makes several very key changes, but the protagonists being a gay couple with an adopted child named Wen is not one of them. Strangely, the way the novel ends is something the film could have easily retained, and would have been better for it, when it comes to the choice the intruders insist this family must make.

The four intruders are led by a large man named Leonard (Paul Bautista), who is accompanied by a nurse named Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird); a chef named Ardiane (Abby Quinn); and a guy named Redmond who Andrew is increasingly convinced was the guy who once assaulted him. Redmond is played in a surprisingly short role by Rupert Grint, here using an American accent. The whole group, after forcing their way inside the cabin, insists they must sacrifice one of their own, and then be willingly killed by one of the other three, in order to prevent the apocalypse.

How or why this is the case, Shyamalan evidently has no interest in exploring. Andrew and Eric both ask questions to this effect, and never get straight answers. They just say no to the question “Will you make a choice” each time it’s asked, and then Leonard turns on the news to show them the latest travesty or global disaster. A giant tsunami at Oregon’s Cannon Beach was a particularly fun one. There are really just three different “judgments” (or plagues, or whatever they want to call it) shown, always in news telecasts. These are by far the most interesting parts of the film, and although I appreciate the impulse to use them sparingly, I wished there were more of it.

The crux of the story, it turns out, is whether this family will make the choice demanded of them, and if so, how they will approach it. This is specifically where the film significantly deviates from the source material, in ways that do nothing to enhance the story. I was fully engaged the whole way through, but in a way that had a curious lack of urgency given the apparent stakes. Knock at the Cabin is the kind of movie that makes me grateful for my monthly AMC subscription: entertaining but relatively forgettable, worth seeing so long as it hasn’t cost anything extra.

It’s not quite as horrifying as they’re trying to make it look.

Overall: B-